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Throughout this chapter, we consider whether chronic social pain leads to increased sensitivity to future instances of physical pain. In this chapter, we examine the effects of chronic social pain on pain sensitivity by focusing specifically on being the victim of bullying by peers. For the purpose of this discussion, victims are individuals who are persistently the recipient of negative, aggressive acts from one or more individuals for extended periods (eg, 6 months; Aalsma, 2008). We posit that chronic peer victimization leads to increased sensitivity to future experiences of victimization. First, we expect that being a frequent target of peer victimization leads to abnormal levels of basal cortisol and altered brain functioning in the anterior cingulate cortex, the right ventral prefrontal cortex, and the insula. We expect that these neural and neuroendocrine alterations will lead to poorer physical health (eg, more frequent and severe …